Research on the penetration length of submerged sonic/supersonic steam jet

The continuous steam region generated by high-speed steam jet discharging into subcooled water is called the steam plume. The plume penetration length is an important index for heat exchange capability of steam jet. In this paper, the penetration length of sonic/supersonic steam jet at the stable condensation regime was investigated experimentally. It was found that the dimensionless penetration length increased with increasing steam mass ux and water temperature. Besides, the dimensionless penetration length of supersonic steam jet was smaller than that of sonic steam jet and decreased with the diminishing designed pressure ratio of supersonic nozzles. Moreover, a correlation was proposed based on the experimental data; the discrepancies between predicted and experimental penetration length were within ±15%.